Homily for Ordinary Time 31 - October 31, 2021

 

Homily for Ordinary Time 31

October 31, 2021

Rightly Ordered

 

            Are you one of those people who have a clean desk and a clean car? If so…please teach me how you do it!

            Don’t we all feel better when things are clean, organized, orderly? We can more easily find what we’re looking for. We can get more accomplished. Our life just feels better when it’s organized. I know that if I ever lose my appointment book (yes, I still use a paper book, since I don’t have a smartphone), I feel a tremendous panic until I find it again! When our life is orderly, we have greater freedom and peace.

            And this is why God gave us commandments – to rightly order our lives.

            Consider, all the way back in Exodus, the way in which God gives us the Commandments. He had just led His Chosen People, the Israelites, out of slavery, through the Red Sea, to Mount Sinai. There He gives them the Commandments – not to enslave them in a new way, but to give them the freedom of a life that is ordered properly.

            The proper order of our lives should be: God first, others second, ourselves third. Dis-order enters our lives when we put ourselves first, or when we love ourselves more than others, or even if we love others more than God. No, a rightly ordered life is: God first, others second, ourselves third.

            Hence these two Commandments in the Gospels. The first Commandment is the very core of who we are: love God with our whole heart, whole mind, whole soul. We can’t understand what it means to be human until we have a right relationship with God.

            But, let’s be honest – do we really love God above all things? I think there are three ways to tell if God is our #1, or if we are making anything else an idol: time, sacrifices, and enthusiasm.

            First, how do we spend our time? God asks for one hour per week for Mass, out of 168 hours in the entire week. Less than 1%. If we are too busy to make it to Mass, then we are idolizing something else – is it our work? Our kids’ sports? Our own laziness? If we spend no time in prayer, then God is not #1. Obviously we have to sleep and eat and work for eight hours a day, but that should leave us enough time to give God, not the scraps, but a significant portion of the day. The first litmus test, then, for whether God is first in our life is do we give Him time?

            Second, what are we willing to sacrifice for? There’s a great true story about a woman who was getting ready to go to church, and she noticed her husband sitting on the couch in his pajamas, reading the newspaper. She said to him, “Aren’t you going to church this morning?” He replied grumpily, “Nah, I don’t like that new priest.” She replied, “Well you also said you don’t like that new bartender, but you sure as heck haven’t stopped going there!” People are willing to put up with a lot for things they love – athletes will give up desserts to get in shape, but will they fast from dessert for the sake of growing closer to the Lord? People will give up sleep to work hard on a project, but will they give up sleep to pray a Rosary? What we sacrifice for is what we love.

            Third, what do we get enthusiastic about? Think about the NFL. Have you ever seen those fans who paint their bodies and wear cheese-heads and scream into the camera and live and breathe their team? These same guys, who are so enthusiastic about football, you take them to Mass and I say, “The Lord be with you!” And they respond grumbling, “And with your spirit.” Where’s the enthusiasm? Can there be anything greater than to love the Lord, to seek everlasting life? A football game lasts for a few hours, but seeking the Lord is a life-long adventure that lasts into eternity. Following Christ isn’t boring at all – it’s the most exciting quest to conquer our vices, to develop a deep interior life of prayer, to fight the devil, to help the Lord Jesus on His mission of bringing the world to Heaven – I can’t think of anything that makes me more excited!

            So – let’s go back to that idea of ordering our life of God first, others second, ourselves third. Only if God is truly first will we be able to love others well. Mother Teresa used to tell her nuns that before they served the poorest of the poor – people who were literally starving to death in the slums of Calcutta – they had to first spend an hour before the Eucharist, the True Presence of Jesus Christ. She said, “Let us first see Christ hidden in the Eucharist, so we can then see Christ hidden in the distressing disguise of the poor.” Only if Christ lives in us can we see Christ living in others.

            In fact, Mother Teresa is a perfect example of living out these two Commandments. We all know her as the great humanitarian, who worked with the poor. But what motivated her? At eighteen years old, she left her home country of Albania to become a nun in India, working in a school for wealthy girls. But as Mother Teresa grew in her daily prayer, she made a promise to Jesus to “never refuse Him anything.” That’s a dangerous prayer – but one that can only come from a heart that loves the Lord more than anything.

            One day, she was on a train ride to the mountains, when Jesus spoke to her heart very clearly. He said, “Will you bring My light to the poorest of the poor?” Remembering her vow, she courageously said yes and left the school with nothing but the clothes on her back. That first person she encountered, the man dying in the gutters of Calcutta with maggots crawling around in his sores – that was Christ in disguise. Only because she loved God so intensely could pick him up, clean out his wounds, and allow him to die in dignity and peace. That first man soon became thousands upon thousands that she helped, spurred on by her love for God. Hers was a rightly-ordered life – God first, others second, herself third.

            And you know what? Mother Teresa radiated incredible joy. In every picture, she is smiling with a joy the world cannot explain.

            Because that’s what happens when our life is in the right order: God first, others second, ourselves third.