Sunday – Ordinary Time – Week 06 – Year A

Sunday – Ordinary Time – Week 06 – Year A

Some weeks ago, I gave a homily about how Pope Francis wants our parish to be a place of welcome for all people. He wrote, last March, a document called the Joy of Love, and in it he asked us to be accepting of people who have been divorced and remarried or who are struggling with same sex attraction. After Mass, some parishioners asked me whether this mean that the Church was abandoning the truth of our Lord, and it’s a fair question, but the answer is no.

In that document the Pope wrote, “In order to avoid all misunderstanding, I would point out that in no way must the Church desist from proposing the full ideal of marriage, God’s plan in all its grandeur.”

The Scripture Readings

Sunday – Ordinary Time – Week 22 – Year B

Sunday – Ordinary Time – Week 22 – Year B

Have we ever had a conversation with a non-Catholic, and got the sense that they thought we were modern day Pharisees? To them we seem like Pharisees, because we have many customs and traditions, many “laws”. If we combined all the laws of the Church into books and stacked those books from the ground up, that stack might be as tall as Fr. Roy. =) Today Jesus is reminding us that church law, church customs and traditions, are not on the same level as the Law of Love instituted by God. Jesus rebukes the Pharisees for allowing their own changeable laws to blind them to God’s very presence before them. The external devotions they invented, like ritual washing, were supposed to help them draw close to God. But when God drew close to them, becoming Christ Jesus, they did not recognize him. Do the laws of the Church keep us from drawing close to and following Christ?