by Fr. Tommy Lane
Jesus talks about offering acts of kindness to others in the Gospel today:
Anyone who gives you a
cup of water to drink
because you belong to Christ,
amen, I
say to you, will surely not lose his reward. (Mark 9:41)
Jesus identifies with the ones who are thirsty, with the ones who suffer. Helping them is helping Jesus. It reminds us of the words of Jesus on another occasion: “whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.” (Matt 25:40) We live life differently, we live life better, because of Jesus. Pope Francis, in a homily in Philadelphia in 2016, had these comments on the words of Jesus in the Gospel today:
“Whoever gives you a cup of water in my name will not go unrewarded”, says Jesus. These little gestures are those we learn at home, in the family; they get lost amid all the other things we do, yet they do make each day different. They are the quiet things done by mothers and grandmothers, by fathers and grandfathers, by children, by brothers and sisters. They are little signs of tenderness, affection and compassion. Like the warm supper we look forward to at night, the early lunch awaiting someone who gets up early to go to work. Homely gestures. Like a blessing before we go to bed, or a hug after we return from a hard day’s work. Love is shown by little things, by attention to small daily signs which make us feel at home. Faith grows when it is lived and shaped by love. That is why our families, our homes, are true domestic churches. They are the right place for faith to become life, and life to grow in faith.
Jesus tells us not to hold back these little miracles. Instead, he wants us to encourage them, to spread them. He asks us to go through life, our everyday life, encouraging all these little signs of love as signs of his own living and active presence in our world. (Pope Francis, Philadelphia, Sunday September 27, 2016)
Not only can we make the lives of others better because of Jesus, but we can also make our own lives better because of Jesus. Jesus’ next words in the Gospel today are in the exaggerated Palestinian language of that time encouraging us to avoid what might lead us into sin. Jesus says to amputate a limb or pluck out an eye if it is causing us to sin. That exaggerated language is called hyperbole, an intentional exaggeration not to be taken literally. We might simply say Jesus is speaking metaphorically. He is asking us to avoid what are sometimes called occasions of sin or to practice custody of the eyes. To put it another way, be familiar with what triggers us to commit sin so that the next time we are triggered, we will be aware and avoid sin. In that case, the question for each of us is, “Do we know what triggers us?” Can we act responsibly when we become aware that we are being triggered? Triggers could be the phone or TV, being cold, tired, hungry, seeing someone scantily clad, being under the influence of some substance, being disrespected by someone, encountering someone who causes us to be jealous, or a whole host of other issues.
From time-to-time people ask me what they can do to avoid bad thoughts. I think the more we immerse ourselves in the spiritual life, the more we pray, the more we read the Bible or do spiritual reading, these thoughts should lesson over time. As a result of original sin, human nature has been weakened and not only are we subject to death and illness as a result of the sin of Adam and Eve, but also inclined to sin. We call this inclination concupiscence. While Baptism washed away original sin, the weakness of nature remained and so we get sick, we die, and we have to struggle against concupiscence, the inclination to sin. Pope John Paul II in his Theology of the Body insisted that we are not at the mercy of the forces of fallen nature because fallen nature has been redeemed by Jesus (46.4). We are to rediscover the true meaning of who we are and in that way be free, free from being mastered by concupiscence (46.4). It might help to remember what we read in the letter to the Hebrews: Jesus was tempted in every way that we are but did not sin (Heb 4:15). If you have a horse, you train your horse. If you have a dog, you train your dog. Pope John Paul II said we can exercise self-mastery to direct our reactions (Theology of the Body 129.5) In other words, we have to train ourselves just like we train our horse or our dog.
St. Paul, in his letters, is very confident that we can achieve a new life in Jesus. Just some of his statements are these: “live by the Spirit and you will certainly not gratify the desire of the flesh” (Gal 5:16); “if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Rom 8:13); “All of us once lived . . . in the desires of our flesh, following the wishes of the flesh and the impulses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ, . . . raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus.” (Eph 2:3-6)
May Jesus, who died on Calvary to grant us salvation, raise us all up with him to make the lives of others better because of him and make our own lives better by not being mastered by weakened human nature but living by the Spirit.
© Fr. Tommy Lane 2024
This homily was delivered in a parish in Ireland.
More Homilies for the Twenty-Sixth Sunday of Year B
If your hand should cause you to sin cut it off!