Here is my homily from last night’s Mass. God bless all!
So often nowadays we hear the admonition, “Beware! The world is a dangerous place! Be careful what you are exposed to in the world! It will corrupt you!”
Well, I suppose there is some common sense wisdom in all of that. Not everything out there is good for our health and safety. But here all week in the first readings at Mass we hear of God creating things “good.” Indeed, a central teaching of our faith, a teaching founded on the truth of the Scriptures and the self-revelation of God, is that all that God has created is good. He has created this world of ours for us to use and to sustain us here.
And in our Gospel tonight from St. Mark, we hear Jesus tell us that it is not what comes into us that defiles us but what comes out of us. Jesus is affirming the goodness of creation. He also acknowledges that man corrupts the goodness of that creation.
Yes, my friends, if we have anything to fear in this world it is not what God has created the world to be, but rather what we have corrupted by our own devices, what we have taken and misused. Indeed, we ourselves who are created, and created good, take that goodness which is ours and we all too often defile it.
Careful we need to be… not of the world, but of what we have done to the world.
The Gospel tonight ends with a list of sins that we commit. Perhaps we need to reflect on our own sin (none of us are free of it) and the ways we have brought fear and corruption into a very beautiful and good world.
God is good, and he always provides for us in abundance the good things we need to live. He only gives us what is good and what is needed by us.
Let us thank him tonight for his goodness to us, and resolve to not be afraid.
