Homily for
Ordinary Time 21
August 21, 2016
Invitation
Do you
ever find an invitation laying on your table – and you can’t remember if you
RSVP’d or not? That happened to me recently. Our bishop hosts an annual cookout
for all priests in late August, and he sent all of us an invitation a couple
months ago. Honestly I don’t remember if I replied or not, but all the priests
got an email last week telling us that if we haven’t responded, we’d better do
so soon! I had a moment of panic – did I respond? I don’t want to respond
twice, that’d make me look foolish. But what if I forgot the first time? What
if I show up and they never received my RSVP? Yikes!
It’s
only polite to respond promptly to invitations. And the Lord sent His Son to
invite every human being – every person who ever lived, including all of us in
the church this morning – to spend eternity at the wedding feast of the Lamb.
It says in Scripture, “God desires all men to be saved.” The invitation is open
to all!
But not
everyone RSVP’s. Jesus makes it clear that we don’t automatically go to Heaven
when we die, contrary to popular belief. He is asked, “Will only a few be
saved?” And He answers cryptically that many will not be strong enough to enter
through the narrow gate. Hell is a real possibility – if it weren’t, what would
Jesus have died to save us from? In 1917, Mary appeared to three shepherd
children in Fatima, Portugal, and one of the messages she said to them was, “Pray,
pray very much for sinners, because many people go to Hell because there is no
one to pray and make sacrifices for them.”
Hell is
simply our rejection of God’s invitation. It isn’t God that condemns a soul to
Hell – that person freely chooses to reject God’s invitation of eternal life.
God has given human beings free will, and He respects our free choices, even if
we choose to reject His life-giving invitation.
But how
do we accept that invitation? By having a living faith. We believe that Jesus
Christ died for our sins, and then we seek to follow Him in our life.
Notice I
said a “living faith”. Faith must be lived – we cannot choose to sin and think
that we have faith, or try to do the “bare minimum” and think we will be saved!
In fact, certain actions of ours are, in themselves, enough to reject the
invitation – those actions are called mortal sins. We often think, “Oh, I haven’t
murdered anyone, I’m a pretty good person.” But there are many more mortal sins
than just murder. Getting drunk or doing drugs, intentionally missing Mass on
Sunday, porn or sex outside of marriage are all mortal sins that destroy the
life of grace within us. When we do these things, we say with our actions, “I’d
rather enjoy pleasure than the joys of eternity; I’d rather worship myself and
my own desires rather than the God Who loves me and Who has invited me to
Heaven with Him.” Mortal sins reject that invitation that God has placed in
every human heart! But the good news is that while we are still alive, we can
repent of them through Confession and change our RSVP to “YES!”
There is a great story from the life of St.
Teresa of Avila – she was such a remarkable woman; if you don’t know anything
about her, go and check out her life. Some amazing stories there! She had been
a nun for several years when, in prayer one day, God gave her a vision of Hell…and
allowed her to see the place in Hell that was reserved for her! She was
terrified by the vision and when she returned to her senses, she realized that
she had been living a half-hearted, mediocre, lukewarm life. Her faith was not
a living faith! But she immediately
repented and became a great saint!
Christ
wants us to be saved, and He will give us every grace necessary for salvation.
But we must respond to that invitation with our faith and with our life –
living a life for Jesus, seeking holiness!
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