Invited Into Eternity - Part IV

Sunday readings here. 

We are now into the fourth week of our homiletic series entitled “Invited into Eternity”, which we began on Easter Sunday.  The theme of this series is that God the Father, from the dawn of creation has not only been inviting us to an eternal life in Heaven with Him but that He has done everything in His power to lure us, to coax us, and to entice us into accepting His invitation and continues to do so to this very day. That’s why He never gave up on Adam and Eve. It’s why He saved the world after the great flood. It’s why He called Abraham and started the nation of Israel. It’s why He continually had mercy on them after their ongoing rejection of His love. It’s why He sent Jesus and it’s why Jesus suffered and died for us, pouring out every last drop of His precious blood and it’s why He raised Jesus from the dead. 

But His coaxing, His luring, His enticing didn’t stop there. Even after Jesus rose from the dead, humanity still did not understand, and so Jesus came back to try finally once and for all to get them to understand.  That’s what the stories we’ve been hearing during this Easter season are all about.

He appeared to Mary Magdalen. He appeared to the disciples on the road to Emmaus. He appeared to the Apostles while those disciples were explaining to them what they saw, and then He appeared to the Apostles again because Thomas wasn’t there when He appeared the first time.  Even after that the Apostles still headed back to their old livelihood of fishing, and Jesus appeared yet again, this time with breakfast prepared for them on the beach. But He is not just inviting us into eternity, He is inviting us into eternity with Him.

He is inviting us to a life of the very best kind.  Now at this point there are two very obvious questions in my mind.  Why does God do all this for us; why are we so important to Him; why does He put up with us?  The second question is the flip side:  Why don’t we just with absolutely positively with grateful hearts and open arms accept His invitation? I mean really, wouldn’t you think that if we were invited to live life of the very best kind we would sign up immediately? But we don’t. I think we can find one possible explanation in our Gospel today.

Of course we know that Jesus in this Gospel depicts Himself as the Good Shepherd who does what; who lays down His life for the sheep so that they might have life of the very best kind. But the problem for us might be that this means we need to see ourselves as sheep and we just might have a problem with that.  I remember once in High School I gave a homily about the sheep and the goats, and a teacher came up to me and said something like, “Well Father, your homily would have worked quite well, accept that I am not a dumb sheep.”  You know what? I think that teacher’s statement pretty well sums it up.  If we are going to able to accept Jesus’s invitation to an eternal life of the very best kind, we need to be able to see ourselves as sheep in relation to Jesus the Good Shepherd.  Actually, we need to be humble enough to be as smart as sheep who both can recognize who they are and who their shepherd is. And then maybe we can accept God’s invitation to an eternity with Him which is indeed the very best kind of life for us.

- Rev. Joseph Maloney, Pastor 

Invited Into Eternity - Part III

Sunday Readings here.

On this third week of Easter we continue with the third installment of our homiletic series which we are calling “Invited into Eternity”.

The basic point of this series is that ever since the creation of the first human beings, the Father has been doing everything He can do to coax us into a positive response to His invitation for us to spend eternity with Him; to enjoy a life of the very best kind. As we know, He went so far as to sending His only son to die for us so that the gates of Heaven could be unlocked for us. And that is what He does: He coaxes, He lures us, He entices us; He woos us.

The readings for today bear this out very well. In the first reading, St. Peter speaks to the people about their terrible sin of cooperating in the death of Jesus, but instead of condemning them, he urges them to repent and be converted so that their sins might be wiped away. In the second reading, St. Paul says that if we sin, Jesus Christ is our Advocate with the Father. In our Gospel, Jesus Himself appears in the flesh to the two disciples on their way to Emmaus so that He might invite them to life with Him and the Father. He opened their minds to the understanding of the Scriptures and invited them to life of the very best kind. He told them, “You are witnesses of these things.” That’s what eternal life with God is all about: witnessing to Him and being incredulous for sheer joy in doing so.

No matter what we are doing, no matter who we are, no matter where we are, we are being invited into eternity by the Father; to accept is to begin living, at that very moment, a life of the very best kind. 

- Rev. Joseph Maloney, Pastor 

Invited Into Eternity - Part II

Invited Into Eternity – Week 2

Sunday Readings: here. 

Today, on this last day within the Octave of Easter, we continue with the second week of our series entitled “Invited into Eternity.”

As we began this series last week we said that all of salvation history, from the creation of the first human beings to the resurrection of Christ, was about inviting us to live with the Father through all eternity. The Father does everything He does, even sending His only Son to us, so that we might accept His invitation to eternal life with Him. Likewise, the Son endured all that He endured so that we might respond positively to the Father’s eternal invitation. The Father and the Son stop at nothing so that we might be coaxed into accepting eternity with Him. Yes, that’s what I said: the Father coaxes us; the Son coaxes us.

We have this idea that we are striving throughout our lives to jump through these impossible hoops that the Lord gives us and that all we can do is to hope against hope that our all-out effort will merit us a merciful judgment from the Lord. However, I don’t think that’s how the Lord sees it at all.

In the story of the Prodigal Son, the Father tells the elder son that everything he has is his and begs him to come into the party. Jesus died on the cross to open the gates of Heaven for us so that we can enter into the heavenly celebration. Now, what exactly do we do for Him? He invites us to a life of the very best kind: eternal life with Him.

Our readings today give us an example of the life to which He is inviting us:

The Acts of the Apostles say this: The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common. With great power the apostles bore witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great favor was accorded them all. There was no needy person among them, for those who owned property or houses would sell them, bring the proceeds of the sale, and put them at the feet of the apostles, and they were distributed to each according to need (Acts 4:32-35).

It might be a rude awakening for us, but I think it is safe to say that in heaven there is no private property, there are no locked doors, and that no one is in need. This is the life to which we are invited, a life in which we bear powerful witness to the Lord and bask in His great favor. And we do not have to wait to accept His invitation; we can accept it now, we can live it now, we can live in His great favor now. The next step for us is to believe in Him, and that’s what the remaining readings are about.

In the second reading, St. John says that everyone who believes is begotten by God, loves the Father, obeys the commandments – which are not burdensome – and conquers the world (1 Jn 5: 1-6). And then, of course, we come to today’s Gospel in which we hear the story of doubting Thomas, who represents all of us. Jesus says to Him and us, “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed,” (Jn 20: 19-31) The Father’s invitation to eternal life is an invitation to belief; it is an invitation for us to literally conquer the world, to be free of and from locked doors, to live in great favor as beloved children of God. It is an invitation to a life of the very best kind.

-          Rev. Joseph Maloney, Pastor