Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Welcome to the Blessed Sacrament Homilies podcast where our mission is to help everyone recognize and experience the presence of God. We hope you are nourished and encouraged by the Word. Thank you for joining us.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: The Lord be with you and with your spirit. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew Glory to you, O Lord.
At the sight of the crowds, Jesus heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned like sheep without a shepherd.
Then he said to his disciples, the harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few.
So ask the Master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.
Then he summoned his 12 disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to drive them out and to cure every disease and every illness.
The names of the twelve apostles are these First Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew James the son of Zebedee and his brother John, Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the tax collector James the son of Alphaeus and Thaddaeus, Simon from Cana and Judas Iscariot who betrayed him.
Jesus sent out these 12 after instructing them thus.
Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town.
Go rather to the lost sheep of the House of Israel as you go make this the kingdom of Heaven is at hand.
Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, drive out demonstration without cost you have received without cost you are to give the Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ as you have more than likely learned. I like to edify you with information regarding pop culture.
At least pop culture from 20 years and back, which is why I've shared with you many times my PhD level of understanding of the TV show MASH.
But today I want to talk about a different show because this is the last regular network TV show that I watched regularly and goes back a ways.
But how many of you watched House when it was on? Any of you? Anybody else watched that? I was so it did my heart good to see someone with such love and compassion that reminded me of myself that I really liked that show.
But do you remember the one mantra he would tell his young doctors that they needed to learn anybody?
Everybody lies was the thing he always told them, and that was in their talking to their doctor. They always hide something that's information that would be helpful, but I fully believe that that is really true.
Everybody lies.
But how we do it varies.
Most of us try really hard not to lie to other people, not to lie to our loved ones, but we all tend to at least a little bit lie to ourselves.
And one of the biggest lies we can tell ourselves is that absolutely anything we have, including by the way, our own lives that we have somehow merited or earned, when in reality, everything about our lives, from our prosperity to our intelligence, to our athletic ability, to our popularity, to our good looks, by the way, all of those things are gift from God.
Now that doesn't mean that God doesn't want us to have these gifts, of course, but it does mean that we can never hold them so close to ourselves because we think we've earned them, that we're not first supposed to use them to build up the kingdom of God.
So when we have an abundance of wealth, we can help those who have less.
When we have a gift or a talent that is special, we can share that gift with those who lack that talent or that gift.
When we have the ability to be compassionate, we can share that compassion with other people.
We could literally share everything about ourselves that's been given to build up the kingdom.
And this gospel at the very end reminds us of that with basically a smack right in the face.
Without cost you have received and without cost you are to give.
Jesus is reminding us of that reality that all we're about is gift from God.
And like I said, we're building up the kingdom.
We don't wait for some far off heaven in the future.
Jesus talked about proclaim the kingdom of God and that's now.
Is it fully developed? Not even close.
But the way we get closer is by our sharing the gifts we receive back to the world.
We have a role to play in building that kingdom and we do so when we recognize that everything has been given to us in abundance and we need to share those things with one another.
