2/3/2013 – Fourth Sunday in ordinary time - Jeremiah 1:4-5, 17-19; Luke 4:21-30 –

        It is wonderful to be here with all of you here for my first Sunday mass here at St James parish in Tupelo.  It has seemed to be a whirlwind of activity for me, trying to wind down all my activities in Yazoo City and Belzoni and to get ready for the move here to northeast Mississippi.  As we hear about the calls that Jesus and Jeremiah lived out in their lives under some rather difficult and challenging circumstances, we might think about the calls that God sends us in our own lives.  I arrived here in Tupelo very late on Thursday night and got up to celebrate the 8:00 mass with the community here on Friday morning.  One of the last things I did in Yazoo City was to visit the state prison there and to say goodbye to the inmates who have been attending my Catholic services there for the past 2 ½ years.  In fact, I have been visiting inmates in three different prisons these past years, so prison ministry is something that God has called me to as a priest and that has grown very near and dear to my heart.  A few weeks ago, I noticed a saying scrawled on a whiteboard in the chapel of the federal prison in Yazoo City where I had mass with the prisoners each Saturday morning.  It said this – “Do not judge today based on the harvest that you reap – rather, look at today based upon the number of seeds that you sow.” 

          I can imagine this saying having a particular meaning to the prophet Jeremiah and the circumstances of today’s first reading.  Jeremiah feels destined and called to be a prophet.  In fact, God told Jeremiah that even before he was formed in his mother's womb, God knew him and chose him for the special purpose of being a prophet not only for the people of Israel, but rather for all the nations.

As comforting and hopeful as God’s message sounds to us today, of choosing Jeremiah as a prophet, God warns Jeremiah of the opposition and resistance his prophetic message will incur from the people. God tells him to prepare himself and arise, to tighten his belt and to get ready for action.  What a frightening message for Jeremiah to hear.  However, God tells him that he will protect him in the midst of this, that God will make him a pillar of iron, a fortified city able to withstand the enemy attacks.  God promises Jeremiah that his enemies will not prevail, that Jeremiah will be delivered. 

         Jeremiah's experiences in a hostile environment are echoed in the reaction Jesus receives in his hometown: the crowd assembled in the synagogue is astonished and initially responds favorably to the glad tidings to the poor that Jesus proclaims from the book of Isaiah.  But, the crowd begins to wonder how a carpenter's son could be doing something so beyond the boundaries of accepted behavior according to his status in society. Yet, Jesus continues to challenge their narrow view of God's love and salvation by noting how Elisha and Elijah reached out to the Gentiles in healing miracles.  The crowd becomes furious and even wants to harm Jesus, not wanting to give up its preconceptions about Jesus or about God.

         Jesus and Jeremiah continued to sow seeds in the lives of the people.  They continued to bring God’s message to the people and to proclaim the kingdom of God to all.   We, too, are called to sow seeds in our lives, to have God’s message affect how we live in the world, and to have that message change and renew the world in both little and big ways. 

We have been recognizing the Year of Faith since October, celebrating the faith traditions, devotions, and spirituality that mark our Catholic faith.  We have been trying to renew the Catholic faith within all of us, and then in turn, we are to use our faith to be evangelizers to the world.  Today, February 3, we celebrate St Blaise each year.  Blaise was a bishop is Armenia who was martyred for the faith back in the year 316.  The is a legend that has been passed down about St Blaise, about how he healed a boy was brought to him who was chocking on a fish bone in his throat and about to die.  St Blaise is now the patron saint of those suffering for maladies of the throat, so we have a special blessing of the throats today in honor of Blaise and to recall this tradition of our faith.  Coming in the middle of cold and flu season, this blessing could not come at a better time for us.  So now, we will invite people to come forward for our traditional blessing of the throats.  

1/29/2012 – Fourth Sunday of ordinary time – Cycle B - Deut 18:15-20, Mark 1:21-28

        “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” We prayed this refrain in our psalm this morning just a little while ago, but what meaning does this have for us?  We can open our hearts to God’s voice and allow it to lead us and guide us in life.  Or, to the contrary, we can close our hearts to God’s voice and not listen to what it is saying.  Indeed, it may be a challenge for us to distinguish God’s voice from all the noise and busyness and other distractions that are calling out to us and filling up our days. 

         So, who do we see as the authority in our lives?  That is a good question today, since today’s readings all deal with the theme of authority.  When I was a lay missionary in Ecuador, I spent a couple of months in the capital city of Quito at our missionary order’s provincial headquarters in that country, learning the Spanish language in preparation for my assignment in the jungle.  The provincial of the order, Father Angel Lafita, used to quiz us lay missionaries in Spanish about the words that came from the readings in the mass to see how much we were learning and comprehending.  I remember one evening at the dinner table Father Lafita asked me if I understood the word “antojo” which was used in the psalm at mass that day.   I understood that the word “antojo” meant a caprice or a whim or a craving.  He asked me what the “antojos” or “whims” were in my life.  I thought for a moment, and then blurted out – “libros” – books.  He smiled at my answer, because he knew that I was always reading something, and that books were my craving and downfall in life.  He knew from my answer that I understood the meaning of that word.

         Well, when the crowds heard Jesus teaching in the synagogue, when they saw him draw a demon out of a man at his command, they recognized that Jesus was not just one of the common scribes in ancient Israel, but that he was a man that had an authority they had never seen before.  And if we are like these crowds, if we do indeed recognize that Jesus has authority - a very special, unique authority - how do we allow that authority to interact in our lives?  This authority has to be more than a whim, more than a craving or an impetuous impulse.  That authority has to be foundational as to how we truly live.  It is good for us to have a passion in life, something we enjoy doing that brings us joy.  A lot of us here really love to do things such as hunting, reading or gardening, exercising or following our favorite football team.  Those things may be indeed very important parts of our lives and our identities, but we can’t give those activities priority in our lives over God, we can’t make them our idols.

         Allowing our faith to have authority in our lives is sometimes easier said that done.  Unfortunately, I think many Americans take a negative view of authority of any kind, but nevertheless, authority is an important part of all of our lives.  If we are faithful to our Catholic faith, we recognize the authority of the Church in our lives.  Within the Church, there are several sources of this authority.  We not only have the authority of Sacred Scripture & Tradition, but also the teachings of the Magisterium of the Church, comprised of the pope & the college of bishops.  And as I priest, I take this authority seriously, just as all of us as Catholics should.  When I meeting with someone as a priest, when I up here preaching or celebrating mass, I am not just Lincoln, but rather a priest who is representing the Church, who is teaching and preaching and standing up for what our faith believes.

Many of the contemporaries of Jesus had a difficult time with the issue of his authority.  They did not deny the mighty deeds of power that Jesus performed, such as the healing of the man possessed by an unclean spirit in today's reading from Mark.  Yet, the crowds were troubled by the source of Jesus' authority.  By what authority is Jesus, this carpenter from Nazareth, speaking & performing these miraculous acts? They wondered: Is he acting by an authority from God, or is it from the world of the other, the lesser gods & spirits?  Through Jesus' healing & teaching at the synagogue at Capernaum, through the manner in which he acts honorably & not shamefully, the people start spreading Jesus' upright reputation throughout the region of Galilee. 

         As modern Americans, most of us believe we have much greater power over our lives in comparison to those in the ancient world who believed in spirits or other things we now consider to be superstitious.  Yet, are we really giving God, the Church, & our faith authority in our lives? Or, are we letting an improperly formed conscience and the voices of the false prophets in our secular society control what we believe as a part of our Catholic faith?