Deacon Bob’s Homily for Thursday, 8th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Here is my homily from this morning’s Mass. God bless!

I fell in love with the Book of Sirach, which we are reading this week as our first reading at Mass, back in my freshman year in college. Back then, I was required to read the whole Bible from front to back as part of a full-year scripture course. I came to Sirach, which I had never read before, and I loved it.

In Sirach we hear described in so many wonderful ways who God is and how he acts in the world. Beautiful descriptions of God and his working in the world. It gives us the opportunity to contemplate, to reflect, on what we know about God.

Of course we think of God as the Trinity, Father, Son and Spirit, and we will be hearing about him in that way this Sunday as we celebrate Trinity Sunday, but what else has God revealed about himself?

God is one. There is only one God, there is no other. God is perfect unity. God is perfect balance. God knows all and is everywhere. We may try to evade God’s presence but we can’t. No matter where we may be, God is there. God is pure spirit. God has no defect or error. God is the Truth. God is pure Love. God is so much more than these attributes. No one cannot understand God, only God himself. We know only what he has revealed to us.

This is the same God who lives in you! The God of the universe lives in you! In the fullness of time, and with great love, he chose to become man to further reveal to us who he is and to draw us to him in an intimate relationship. God wanted to touch us as a man and forgive us and bring us into communion with him.

My friends, I think it is good for us to take the time today, maybe for just five or ten minutes, to sit back and think of God, and how he loves us and lives in us and wants us to become like him.

God lives in you! The God who is so much greater and different than us, the all-powerful Divine Being, the Triune God, lives in you! He brings you to himself!