22A 2014 BOYNES

St. Paul gives us a challenge today, one that ties all 3 readings together: "offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God - your spiritual worship."

Notice how Paul uses body and spirit in the same breath. Human beings are one reality

-body and spirit cannot be separated during our earthly life.

And so it is with our walk with The Lord. We cannot separate the material from the spiritual. That's what St. John Paul II talked about in his Theology of the Body. He saw the body as a "sacrament" of the human person- a visible sign of an invisible reality. Our body is the only instrument God gave us to reveal that image of God in which we are created. We are created in the image of a God who is a community of persons, a God who is self-gift, a God who is generous Love. The way to true happiness is to live according to that design in which we are made.

Christopher West is coming to Gaylord on September 13 to talk about all this. He's the leading speaker and author on this great teaching of John Paul II. I think you will be greatly blessed if you can attend. Tickets are available after Mass, in the parish office, or you can register online. See me after Mass if you want to learn more.

We cannot separate the material from the spiritual. When we do, we lead ourselves away from Truth- from He who Is Truth. If Jesus is Lord, then He's Lord of every part of my life: physical, spiritual, financial, political.

Ah...money and politics! The surest way for a priest to make people mad is to talk about how you vote or how you spend. Why is that? What makes money or politics off limits? ...Nothing! If Jesus is my Lord, He's Lord of every part of my life.

Ok, so Paul is talking about my whole being- spiritual and material. So what does he ask us to do with it?..."offer a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God." Under the Old Covenant, one of the highest forms of sacrifice was animal sacrifice. A valuable animal was destroyed and offered to God in atonement for sin.

Now, the One sacrifice of Christ has surpassed all others. Paul urges us to respond to it by offering our entire being: a "living sacrifice" that we offer again and again.

But This Sacrifice does not destroy us, it brings us life! That's what Jesus is talking about in today's Gospel. It says, He "began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly...and be killed, and on the third day be raised" again. Now this was the first time He predicted His passion, and the disciples did not want to hear it. Peter said, 'God forbid, this can't happen!"--Jesus didn't take that too well, did He? "Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do."

How true! The message of the Cross is strange to us. We don't like suffering, or denying ourself. I think its even more true today: Technology has made life easier than it has ever been. So has economic prosperity. We don't have to wait, or suffer, or deny ourselves - not nearly as much as our ancestors did...or as many of our brothers and sisters around the world.

Times have changed, but the message of the Cross is still the same: New Life comes from Dying to Self. True wealth comes from poverty of spirit. Emptying ourself allows God to fill us with His Life.

Jesus says, "Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow." In Christ, the way to life is Through the Cross.

Now all of this sounds very negative: denial, sacrifice, emptying ourselves. But I think the prophet Jeremiah gives us a great insight in our first reading today. Jeremiah is one of the greatest prophets. The influence of his writing can be seen on some of the Psalms, and in the writings of Ezekiel and Isaiah.

But today we hear Jeremiah struggling with the cost of serving The Lord. He says, "The word of The Lord has brought be derision and reproach all the day...I am the object of laughter; everyone mocks me." Actually, they did more than that - Jeremiah has just been flogged for challenging the leaders of the community. So he says to himself, "I will not mention Him, I will speak His name no more. But then, it becomes like fire burning in my heart...I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it."

I pray that I would be more like Jeremiah...that we all would:

- that God's Love would be a fire in our hearts that we cannot contain.

- that offering our whole self would be something that we want to do, that we can't hold back.

Then we would truly be, in the words of Paul, "a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God"

Then the Kingdom of God would be truly alive in this place.