Homilies

“Without cost you have received.” The words of the Lord seem so clear. The Gospel is free. Salvation is free. Yet we have slowly allowed ourselves to believe something else. The world and its ideas have taken root in many hearts. Many people have come to think that we somehow purchase the faith.

I saw this in a parish not long ago. It was not our parish. Difficult but important changes were introduced, and some people were unhappy. Tensions rose enough that the diocese had to send in others to listen and help bring healing. In the aftermath of those meetings, I saw some of the feedback on social media. One comment struck me: “Why don’t we let the market decide? Each parish can do what it wants, and the money will pick the winner.”

A grain of wheat looks almost weightless in the hand. It is small enough to be overlooked and dismissed. Yet inside that small thing, God has hidden a path from from human hunger to eternal life.

One of the great tragedies of modern life is that we have learned to see creation as flat. A tree is wood and leaves. Water is a chemical substance. Useful things, perhaps beautiful things, but sealed off from any deeper purpose or meaning. The world becomes a collection of facts, and we become people who know how to use things without knowing how to see them truly and experience them.

To forget a face is to lose more than a memory. The face mediates relationship. It puts flesh on the spirit. To forget a face is to lose a relationship. It is to lose love.

When sin entered the human story, the face of God grew dim in us. We had been made in his image, made to reflect the living communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The image remained, because God does not abandon his own work, but the likeness became blurred. Choosing our own will over the will of God, we lost sight of the One we were made to resemble. Once God’s face became harder to see, humanity itself became harder to understand.