Urgent (2024-01-28, 4th Sunday)

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 Homily, 4^th Sunday (year B)

●●  2024 January 28  ●● Deuteronomy 18:15-20 _ ● Psalm 95  ● ● 1 Corinthians 7:32-35 ●  Mark 1:21-28 ● ●  Title: “URGENT”

[__01__]  The very first word of the gospel today is 'then' =   “T-H-E-N”. This word is written frequently by Mark to indicate that something is about to happen and something is “immediate” or “urgent”.  Mark's gospel has a theme of urgent action.

And I'd like to reflect on the fact that we all need healing urgently, we need healing as soon as possible from God. On an everyday basis, you and I need healing of our memories, healing of our motivations. And we go to confession to heal us of our sins, so that we can start over again with some urgency in our lives. It's a choice between the good spirit and the evil spirit every day.

PAUSE. I'd like to touch on an example I read about about how a group of young players with some urgency overcame the evil of discouragement in their lives, a discouragement they were perhaps not fully aware of.

[__02__] Around the year 2000, a man named John Bacon became the coach of his former high school ice hockey team.

          As a H.S. player on the team, he never scored a goal on the ice, and as a coach in the beginning he was facing a great challenge due to a year-long losing streak. The players had not won a game in nearly 12 months.

          And, they were just getting used to LOSING all the time.

          But, within 3 years, this same team was 1 of the top H.S. teams in the U.S.A. They went as we say, from worst to first from the bottom to the top.

How did he do it, with such urgency?

Noticeably, the coach didn't go out and get new players but simply raised the bar and expected more from his players and came to a new appreciation of what it meant to teach and lead.

In a talk about the topic, the coach proclaimed the following about the view that is often given, the opinion often states of younger people, age 14 to 29-30.

The coach said, “everyone is complaining about young people these days, everyone from age 14 to 29-30. So if you're a kid in high school or college, they're kind of talking about you.  You have been accused by others of not having a good work ethic, of wanting a participation trophy for just showing up.”  (John U. Bacon, “Let Them Lead”)

This coach had a different experience- when he raised the bar or standard, his losing team became a winning team, from “worst to first”

The coach says that some educators, teachers and coaches and clergy (including me) resent the idea that they have to “entertain” students or young people or players.

The coach was speaking to me, in a way, saying – You – PADRE – are an entertainer. You are not going to be on The Tonight Show or the Late Show. But I'm supposed to be some kind of an entertainer,

In other words, all of us in leading and teaching others are in fact in the “entertainment” business to an extent in other words, to demonstrate lessons by real life experience and not just by information.

 

[__03__]   in the Gospel today. Jesus is leading by example to his listeners, and we even read that they are astonished, they are surprised by his authority. And Jesus does this not to entertain them or us, but to attract all of us as His disciples. Jesus is doing this not just not just to entertain us, but to show and witness what it means to conquer and to compete against the evil spirit in our lives, especially if we feel we are on a losing streak or defeated too easily.

START HERE AGAIN

[__04__]    One the ways in which I am drawn down or discouraged is when I simply expect things to be EASY …and when they are not easy I am tempted to give up.

When I was in the seminary studying to become a priest, I noticed this attitude in my classmates and in me, that we were complaining about how much work we had to do, how many papers we had to write and how long it was taking academically to get through the seminary, we thought it should have been much faster, the E-Z Pass lane!. This was the catchphrase / complaint we were heard to say: “all I want to be is a simple parish priest.”

And, this attitude exists  - in other walks of life - among other students and young people who might say, all I want to be is a simple teacher --- lawyer – carpenter – technician - nurse – doctor – business person all I want to be as a simple father, a simple mother. The list goes on.

 Now, at the time, the rector and Dean of the seminary a priest, Monsignor Robert Coleman had a good comeback to this. He said: “All you want to be as a simple parish priest.” Well, I'm not going to deliver that to you because being a parish priest is not so simple.

And being a parent is not simple. Being a teacher is not so simple. And his own day, Jesus demonstrated that our choices between good and evil between the good spirit and the evil spirit are clear, but sometimes not so simple.  

For example, is it easy to stand up to our peers or a family member who is doing wrong or leading us in the wrong direction? It is often “simpler” and more popular to follow the crowd and yield to “peer pressure”.  Doesn’t the path of least resistance seem simple? That does not make it right.

NEW SECTION    One the ways in which I am drawn down or discouraged is when I simply expect things to be SIMPLE or EASY. And, when they are not easy I give up.

St. Paul himself wrote that what we are fighting against what we're fighting against in our lives. We're not simply fighting enemies and adversaries we can see, but really, all of us are encountering evil spirits when we cannot see, and it's often not so simple and we may give up too easily.

NEW SECTION    Consider how some us – myself included – were inclined “give up” during the trouble of the COVID pandemic and the COVID shutdowns, it was not so easy to see the good and the evil at that time, there was the spread of an unfamiliar virus, the COVID-19 that affected thousands of people and necessitated heroic actions by many nurses, doctors, medical professionals, 1^st responders, and essential workers of all kinds. For their heroism we can be grateful.

But how did you respond or I respond to this challenge?

Did we respond by expecting more from ourselves? Or did we respond by expecting less or even nothing? How did you and I respond in a good way or an evil way?

For example, during this virus during this pandemic shutdown, did you find reasons to reconnect with others? Some of us used the virus as a reason to disconnect from people to excuse ourselves from obligations or visits with loved ones.   This is a surrender to the evil spirit to a vice to laziness, sloth

What about religious practice? Did the virus make you (me) more aware of our need for God and His mercy thankful for his mercy? Or did it make us more proud with the attitude? Hey, God, we got this, we flattened the curve,  we survived.

What about our view of other people in our world? Did the virus and the pandemic make us more aware of the many working class men and women by whom food is delivered? Mail is delivered roadwork is done repairs are performed? Or did the experience of being at home make us more close and upon ourselves, and more likely to just take what we want?

 Jesus conquers evil and consoles us not by giving us what we want all the time, or simply driving us to a destination dropping off in his vehicle.

Rather, he is giving us his body and blood. He is giving us the keys to the car you might say and he's doing that with some urgency to help us to move forward, so that we can drive or walk or run or make our way toward God’s call under our own power, but also with his help. This applies to all of us at every age, whether we are younger or older, urgently  [__END__]