14th Sunday Year B

14th Sunday Year B – How Strong Is Our Faith?

Good morning/evening to you all. How has your weekend been so far? In fact, how has your summer been so far? Have you been relaxing and switching off from your normal duties, your daily work hassles and labours? Have you been able to switch on to something different, something else, something that takes over your mind and makes you feel free, relaxed and maybe – recovered?

Well, there is still time. Keep the faith, stay the course and it may well happen to you and for you.

Now, how many of you are or were feeling that I was talking a load of tosh in my opening comments? What is he, am I talking about? Keep the faith – what faith? Faith in what?

Well, I was only talking about how we gear ourselves up to enjoying our down-time; how we set about preparing to accept and use our holiday time so that we get the most from it, both for ourselves and for those around us. What it is that we tackle and deal with directly and deliberately to switch off or to at least turn down from within our normal, usual work-a-day-lives so that we can have and enjoy quieter or maybe louder, fun-filled time.

How good at this are we? How successful at this are we? And where in this is our faith?

At what point are we turning down our faith? At what point are we turning away from our faith as part of our relaxation of our duties? At what point are we taking our faith deliberately and decisively and using this to underpin any and all decisions that we make and take about how we live our lives?

I wonder when it is that we ever think about our faith as this separate entity; this separate thing that is a part of our lives. It is an obvious part of our beliefs – isn’t it? Our faith is what we believe. It is what we trust in or about our God. Our faith is our acceptance, our total acceptance in the messages that Jesus taught to his disciples and to the crowds of the day. God loves each and every one of us for the individual that we are. He has called each and every one of us by our names and we are His.

We know this. We accept this. We believe this and we live this.

We also accept totally that live this belief, this faith in how we show our love for each other, for our neighbours. Our faith is this lived-experience where take the love given to us and reach out to those we met and give it to them. We give it to them freely and openly and honestly and completely. And we do this all of the time.

Our faith is a lived-experience. It is one that grows with every use that we make of it. It is one that becomes stronger and better and more effective with each opportunity that we take and make to offer it to others. It is one that shines out of every word that we speak and every action that we take.

Our faith is the glue that keep us strong and able to deal with life’s challenges in every aspect of our life and our living. It gives us this strong foundation from which we can spring forward into each and every challenge and make the best or the most of each one. The best for us. The best for others and the best for God our Father in heaven.

The strength of our faith allows and enables us to make the rights decisions in every aspect of our lives. Our faith enables us to look after ourselves fully, properly and completely. And because we can and g]have taken care of ourselves, we can look to others and take care of them too. It is like the instruction from the stewardess on the airplanes when they tell you to put on your own oxygen mask or life-jacket first and then to take care of any others in your charge.

We need to be strong in our faith so that we can live it out loud for all to see and to hear and to take in and to wonder at the joy that emanates from us.

Our faith allows and enables us to question what see, what we hear. It allows us to check, to challenge and then to champion what we take in and then when we have considered it fully to include it in our lives.

The people from Nazareth ad their own levels of faith but they would not accept any check or challenge to it. They would not see  Jesus for who he was. They would not listen to him with open ears, open hearts, open minds or open spirits and simply wanted to check him, challenge him and then to chase him away.

His was a message that was too uncomfortable for them to take in; in any way or form. His was a message that would have forced them to change how they lived their lives as neighbours, as believers, as Jews. This would have been too much. Too uncomfortable. Too challenging. Too different.

They had their beliefs. They had their practices. They had their lives and their relationships – and that is all that they wanted. They did not want to be checked, challenged or changed in any way. And they wanted their preachers to fall into the role and pose of who they had had previously. In other words – not Jesus.

Now, we may be able to distance ourselves from the people in Nazareth. We are not them. We are not like them. We are Christians. We are more open and more  available to the messages of Jesus. Our faith is different. It is stronger!

But is it? Is it really? We need to stop every now and then and think hard about what our faith is. On how it is constructed and in how we use it every day. About what our faith looks like. About how it feels whenever we think of it. And about how often we use it, what role it has in our daily living.

Jesus said that our faith, even if it were as small as a mustard seed, could move mountains.

What do we believe? How do we grow that belief? How do we make our faith stronger and build it into every aspect of our lives and our daily living? Keep the faith and let it underpin your lives. Let it grow ever stronger and let it shine forth in all that you do or say or think or feel. Let God be your guide in all your decisions be they work, or play, at labour or at prayer and your faith will see you through and all obstructions and barriers.

Bidding Prayers

1.      That we seek ways and means to build our faith and demonstrate it in every aspect of our lives. Lord in your mercy

2.      That we share our faith with all that we meet and seek to show that Christ is alive and active in each one of us in how we love our neighbours. Lord in your mercy

3.      That Church and World leaders work together to better the lives of the peoples in their charge, especially those on the edges of society. Lord in your mercy

4.      That there is an increase in peace and harmony amongst nations and a decrease in war and conflict. We ;pray especially for those in the Ukraine and in Palestine and Israel. Lord in your mercy

5.      That our parish communities continue to grow in strength and mutual care for each other. We remember with care and prayer Ciaran and Rebecca Gallagher who were married here last week and pray for them and their families. Lord in your mercy

6.      That those who have died recently or whose anniversaries occur at this time  receive the rewards of their faith and are welcomed into the arms of their father in heaven. Lord in  your mercy

7.      That the prayers we now make in the silence of our minds and hearts and in the strength of faith are taken to the Lord. Lord in your mercy

8.      That Mary our Mother and the Mother of the Church intervenes for us as we now pray together, Hail Mary