Here is my homily from this morning. God bless all!
We have this beautiful reading today from St. Paul in which we hear him say that he has come to understand that the supreme good is to know Jesus Christ his Lord.
The supreme good!
How do we know Jesus?
By receiving him.
I think so many of us try to know Jesus by frantically grasping, searching for him. We try to say more prayers, or become morally more upright, or follow the laws more perfectly. We look for Jesus in the law, which Paul tells us will get us very little.
No, we will know Jesus by receiving him. God is present, right here, right now. Are we receptive? The Scriptures are filled with descriptions of God searching for us. He always reaches out to us. Our Gospel today tells us this very clearly. We are that one lost sheep for whom he searches. We are that lost coin for which the woman scours the house to find. Each one of us. We are not yet the 99 righteous who are in heaven. We come to know Jesus by being receptive to his presence, to his search.
When we approach the altar at Mass to receive the Eucharist, we don’t grab the Lord. We don’t take him. He gives himself to us, and we open ourselves to receive him. We do this spiritually and we do this by our physical gesture, our act of openess to his presence.
We won’t know Jesus by taking or grasping. We will know him by receiving him.
God is present! He is here, right here, right now. Are we open to him? We won’t find him in works of the Law, as good as those are.
Yes, indeed, the supreme good of our lives is to know Jesus Christ our Lord. We will know him as fully as we are able when we get to heaven, and there know him face to face. We will then be among the 99 righteous sheep, among the angels of heaven who rejoice, we are told, over the return of the lost sheep. Great will be the joy that day!
