Often, we priests preach on the Gospel of the day, but I remember in seminary
the advice of one of my Scripture professors, Dr Richard Lux, was to not
neglect the first readings and to preach on them as well. In our daily masses, the first readings are usually from the Old Testament, but
this week we have been hearing from Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians. At the time Paul was writing this letter, he realized that the community in
Corinth was drifting away from the true faith and that there was no longer a
strong sense of unity among them. Paul tried to draw them back into the true teachings of Christ, trying to bring
them back to the message that they originally heard, which Paul says is the
true Gospel. That is what I like about having our lectionary of daily and Sunday
readings. If I had to choose what to preach on each week, it would be easy to
concentrate on what was comforting and easy to understand. However, sometimes the message of the Gospel is indeed radical or something we
struggle with. It is easy to label each other in society, and we can see a great division and
polarization and disunity in many facets of our society, particularly in
politics. In the Church, it is easy
to label a priest or a parishioner liberal or conservative. We all have different gifts to bring. We all have different experiences and different
outlooks. If we would journey together
and learn from each other, trying to be true to the message of the Gospel and
to forge ties of unity and solidarity, what wonderful seeds we would be sowing
in our Church! Think about how we can work toward unity in
our parish and our Church, and how we can stay true to Gospel of Jesus
Christ.
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