Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign this is Sundays with Bishop Ken. Thanks for sharing some quiet time with the Lord Today we welcome guest reader Brenda Piazza. Brenda is a parishioner of St. Catherine of Siena Parish in Menden, New York, where she joyfully serves in a variety of ministries.
Brenda also shares her gifts with us each liturgical season, narrating our little book's reflections.
Here is today's Gospel and homily.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke.
At that time The Lord appointed 72 others whom he sent ahead of him in pairs to every town and place he intended to visit.
He said to them, the harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few.
So ask the Master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.
Go on your way.
Behold, I am sending you like lambs among wolves.
Carry no money, bag no sack, no sandals, and greet no one along the way into whatever house you enter. First say peace to this household.
If a peaceful person lives there, your peace will rest on him, but if not, it will return to you.
Stay in the same house and eat and drink what is offered to you, for the laborer deserves his payment.
Do not move about from one house to another.
Whatever town you enter and they welcome you, eat what is set before you, cure the sick in it, and say to them, the kingdom of God is at hand for you.
The Gospel of the Lord what is particularly significant in this gospel passage is Jesus appointed others besides the 12.
These were to be his disciples, too.
They represent all of us.
We aren't members of the 12, but we're disciples. That's what baptism is, a ritual by which we become disciples of Jesus.
Jesus speaks to these others and says, being a disciple won't always be easy.
Again, he's talking about us.
He's talking to us.
Here's a way to get us thinking about what it means to be a disciple of the Lord.
Imagine someone who didn't belong to any religion decided to become a member of the Catholic Church.
So the person went to you or to me and asked, what does it mean for me if I become a member?
What do I have to do?
What do I have to stop doing?
What's different about it?
The first thing we might think of could be, well, you have to go to mass on Sunday, and there are rules about getting married.
But they would interrupt and say, well, apart from those kinds of things, what's different about the way I live my life day in and day out?
I've been a decent person.
Do I have to do something different than be a decent person to be part of this Group.
To answer the question, we'd have to start with something far deeper than keeping church rules, far deeper than simply our external behavior.
We'd have to say something like this.
Well, you see, we believe God is more than an abstract God.
We believe God is very personal and God loves us.
We believe Jesus is God, and Jesus is an expression of God's love for us.
Through Jesus, God became part of this world and part of this human race.
Jesus calls us his brothers and sisters.
You have to understand, Jesus is still alive.
He loves us. He really does.
Right now, he loves us completely, unconditionally, and very personally.
Jesus love has an effect on us.
You know how in many legends and folktales there is the story of a prince who comes upon a young peasant woman who has no money, is wearing a raggedy dress, is. And doesn't think much of herself because nobody else does.
In these stories, the prince falls in love with the peasant, and it has an effect on her.
She has never felt loved this way before.
She suddenly feels she is worth something.
She is transformed.
Her face begins to shine with a certain radiance.
She walks differently, acts differently, all because she is loved.
Loved for who she is.
She was a nobody, and now she is somebody worthwhile.
You see, we believe Jesus loves us that way, and Jesus is God. So God loves us that way.
It transforms us.
God's own love runs through our whole body, our soul, our spirit.
God's own light shines through me and shines upon the world around me and the people around me.
We act differently.
For example, the way we treat this world.
We believe all creation belongs to God, and so we love it too.
It's not a throwaway world like a fast food wrapper.
This is God's world.
God created it and saw it was good.
God gave it a destiny. And Jesus became part of this world to take it to its destiny.
So we try to make it a better place.
And we try to make sure we share the goods of this world with others, because it all belongs to God.
More than that, we see human life differently. It's different because Jesus became a human being and lifted all of us to be daughters and sons of God.
We believe all human beings, whether they know it or not, have God's life in them.
And so our attitude toward people, whether they're good or bad, is always loving.
And we try to do to them what Jesus did for us.
We try to love even our enemies, hoping it will change them.
Even if it doesn't seem to work right away, we keep doing it.
We do it for everyone.
We let God's love shine through us towards them, whether they're an older person or a child in its mother's womb.
So what you have to do if you are a disciple of the Lord, is believe this and live it. We aren't sent into towns and villages like the earliest disciples were.
We are sent into the situations of our own life to live that way.
And we believe it has an effect even when we can't see it. Because God's love is shining through us. And God's love always has an effect, even if it is hidden from our eyes.
So we come together on Sundays to gather with the Lord at His own supper table.
And in those moments we experience his love for each of us and all of us.
We place ourselves with him on the altar and give ourselves in total love to God as He did even in the face of suffering and death.
And at communion we receive the Lord Himself under the form of bread and wine. He embraces us with his love, surrounds us with his love.
When we leave, we go out like those 72 disciples and we live that love.
We let it transform our way of thinking, our way of acting.
We act differently because of it.
To put it very simply, we do our part to change the world by letting love shine through us upon this world and the people in it.
That's what we could say to a person who asks us what it means to be part of this group we call the Church.
This is what we believe and it's why we're disciples of our Lord.
And then we'd say, what a way to live.
Come and join us and be part of this wonderful work of changing the face of the earth.
[00:09:47] Speaker A: Thanks for joining us today.
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Sam.
